Simmering Season Read online

  ‘And why not? They served up a dose of God-only-knows-what chemicals to my son.’

  ‘I know, love. Forgiveness—remember.’

  30

  Maggie

  ‘Yum,’ Maggie said, seeing Ethne scribble her latest creation on the A-frame chalkboard on the front veranda.

  Char-grilled salmon fillet and a warm honey mustard & corriander beetroot salad w minted cucumber.

  ‘But are you sure coriander has two Rs in the middle? I thought it only had one.’

  ‘You think any of this lot will know or care if there’s one, two or twenty? They see double most nights anyway.’ The barmaid gave the signboard a little kick to straighten out the legs.

  ‘Ha ha! Here.’ Maggie handed the requested takeaway hot chocolate to Ethne as they headed back to the bar. Apparently, nobody made hot chocolate better than Will.

  Or put six marshmallows on top.

  ‘Sun’s over the yardarm,’ Barney said from his usual stool. ‘What’s a bloke gotta do to get a beer?’

  ‘Hold your horses, you impatient old bastard,’ Ethne growled, before turning back to Maggie. ‘Things are definitely back to normal around here.’

  ‘Except Fiona’s still in town,’ Maggie said, prising the plastic lid away from the paper cup. ‘She and her grandmother were leaving the café as I arrived.’

  ‘And she was in the beer garden yesterday while you were visiting your dad, looking a bit sheepish with a couple of young local lads.’ Ethne stopped to lick the chocolate foam from the inside of the lid. ‘Them Drysdale boys and old Jim from out at Warnersvale were here. All seemed innocent enough.’

  ‘Innocent? Humph!’

  Hardly looking at what she was doing, the barmaid snatched a schooner glass in one hand and tilted it under the Tooheys Old tap. ‘Heard her asking Jim a few questions, too. I’m thinking she’s never heard that curiosity killed the cat.’

  ‘What sort of questions?’

  ‘She was asking about her mother and that muck-up day when young Willow died. Jim was around Amber’s year, I’m thinking. Here ya go,’ she said wiping beer from her hands after slamming the schooner on the towelling bar runner in front of Barney. ‘That’ll keep ya quiet for about five minutes.’

  Maggie couldn’t recall that sort of detail from twenty-odd years ago and she had no headspace to try.

  ‘Every fibre of my being wants me to be angry with that girl, but the truth is I can’t. Until a couple of years ago she’d never even heard of Calingarry Crossing, much less suspected her mother grew up in a small country town. Makes me wonder how I’d feel if I found out the person I needed the most hadn’t trusted me enough to be honest. Even I’d have trouble forgiving them. Yes, she’s young and spoilt but—’

  ‘Don’t forget arrogant, selfish, shallow, pompous …’

  ‘Okay, okay,’ Maggie laughed and the pair of them sipped their hot drinks.

  After watching the Mount Everest of milk froth build at the corners of Ethne’s mouth, Maggie ran a finger over her own lips. A cappuccino had been the last thing she thought she wanted in this heat until she’d smelled the beans Will was grinding.

  ‘You have to feel sorry for her a bit, Ethne. The girl’s lost her mother, discovered she has a birth father somewhere, and is getting to know the grandmother she didn’t know was still alive until recently. She has so many questions and feels like there’s no one to answer them. I can relate to that.’

  Even though Joe was still with them physically, mentally he was already gone. Every time Maggie said goodbye, her father would hold her hand and give her a look, as though his head was full of things left unsaid, things that he either didn’t know how to say, or couldn’t tell. A bit like Noah the other night when she was busy being angry at Fiona. For some reason her son had connected with the girl. She couldn’t alienate Fiona, not if it risked alienating Noah in the process.

  ‘Most kids are smarter than we give ’em credit for,’ Ethne said, unpacking the Keno cards and small red pencils from the box on the bar. ‘Makes no sense keeping those kind of secrets. Only makes it worse when they eventually find out.’

  Maggie thought of the secrets she kept from Noah about his father’s lifestyle. It went against everything she believed about trust and honesty.

  ‘One thing I did hear the girl ask old Jim was if her mother was ever on with that Dan chappy of yours—the persistent one you’ve been busy avoiding.’

  ‘He is not a chappy of mine.’

  ‘Just saying, is all,’ she chirped. ‘Seems maybe Fiona thinks he might have some of those answers you say she’s craving.’

  ‘Honestly, Ethne, I’m not being mean when I say this, but if you’d listened to the gossip when we were at school … Seriously, Amber Bailey got up to no good with so many boys back then. How much or how often she, you know, actually did it, I wouldn’t know.’

  ‘Sad thing is no one will probably ever know now. The reputation we give ourselves while we’re still kickin’ is going to be the one we leave behind when we die.’ Ethne polished glass after glass with perfunctory proficiency, then in an odd display of diplomacy lowered her voice and nodded towards the end of the bar. ‘Like I was saying to old Barney the other day, does he want people to remember him as the bloke who never finished the boat in his backyard? Told him to pull his finger out.’

  ‘Poor Barney,’ Maggie whispered and laughed, loving the way Ethne’s eyes sparkled when she talked about Barnacle Bill. She’d bestowed that nickname on the man about a billion years ago. Why? Maggie didn’t know. Possibly because of the boat, but more likely the name had something to do with the way he clung to the bar most nights. She called him a good barnacle—whatever that meant. ‘From the bit I know, Ethne, if Amber and Dan ever did it then he was one of goodness know how many. So Fiona is going to need more than a chat with a few locals to find out who Amber got it on with on that night in particular, as opposed to any other—’

  A sound coming from the adjacent dining room made both Maggie and Ethne look up from their task to find a bewildered, blinking Fiona staring back.

  ‘Oh, gosh, Fiona.’ Maggie felt her face grow hot. ‘I didn’t mean … I shouldn’t have said that.’

  The girl didn’t respond straight away. She instead stood perfectly still, face scrunched, her brain possibly processing the information. She looked so different, so young without a skerrick of makeup on her face, and so short without some sort of heel on her shoes. Just …

  Slippers?

  The girl was wearing slippers in the middle of the day. She looked child-like, small, sad, vulnerable. Then, as if injected with a dose of couldn’t-care-less, she sliced one hand through the air with such speed she had to grab a stool to stop from falling.

  ‘You don’t have to apologise to me, marvellous Maggie,’ Fiona said, the words rolling around her tongue before spilling out. ‘No freakin’ worries. Besides, everyone can’t be wrong about my mother.’

  Wobbly boots and glassy eyes were not an unusual sight in a pub, except on a twenty-two-year-old girl and in the middle of the day. Fiona tripped a couple of steps towards the bar and when Maggie moved to help, Ethne tugged her back.

  ‘Leave her be, Mother Magpie,’ she whispered. ‘A fall might do her some good.’

  Maggie shifted to the front of the bar, preparing to catch her should the need arise. Another patient was the last thing she needed.

  ‘Fiona, are you all right?’

  ‘I’m grrrrreat, just great,’ she droned, drawing out each word—a kind of slow-motion speech. ‘Unless, of course, you ask darling Amber. She’ll tell you I’ve never been quite good enough. Nothing like my mother at all. I’m not even close to marvellous Amber.’ Fiona waved a hand to flick her hair over one shoulder, missing her target entirely. ‘This amaaazing person that eeeveryone wanted to be seen with, like she’s some kind of lucky charm. You know the sort I mean? Get a picture, be seen, rub shoulders and you too might be as faaab-u-lous as Amber Bailey-Blair.’

  ‘Fio
na, do want to sit down before you fall down?’ Maggie shifted a bar stool closer.

  ‘No time, Maggie, dear. I have to find my father so I can know who I really am,’ she slurred. ‘And who could blame me for thinking he’d love me, no matter what. But na-huh-ah! No such luck for this little duck. It’s not about me at all. It’s all still about Amber. Amber, Amber, Amber. Gotta say, though, makes a girl kinda proud to know how popular her mother was with the boys. Something to aspire to. What do you think, Maggie?’

  ‘I think you should come over here and sit down,’ Maggie said quietly, glad when she took up the offer, dragging the bar stool under her butt. ‘Don’t judge your mother. We all did things when we were young. That’s what kids do. They make mistakes and bad choices.’

  ‘Like one too many drinks,’ Ethne mumbled, stifling a chuckle when Fiona’s elbow slipped on the edge of the bar, her head jerking forward.

  ‘Ethne, you’re not helping.’ Maggie shot a warning look before focusing on Fiona again. ‘Listen to me. It’s what we make of ourselves after those wrong choices, when we get the opportunity to grow up. That’s what we should be judged on.’

  ‘Here ya go, love.’ Ethne slipped a glass of water under Fiona’s nose. ‘Get that down ya gob and I’ll give you another one.’

  ‘Fiona, your mother wasn’t always in control of those decisions,’ Maggie continued. ‘I believe it was much the same for her mother—Cheryl. They both let other things and other people, like your grandfather, control them. But they both found the courage to stand up for themselves. People need to find their strength, Fiona. You can take control of your life.’

  ‘Like you did, I suppose? I can’t imagine anyone controlling you, Maggie. You seem so together. Noah is sooo lucky to have a mum like you.’

  Ethne slid the metal serviette dispenser over the bar and rolled her eyes. Maggie mouthed ‘Thank you’ and tugged out several paper napkins, shoving them in the hand that was propping Fiona’s bobbing head.

  ‘Look, Fiona, I saw your mum for the first time in twenty years the night she arrived at the Dandelion House that autumn and I can tell you, by the time she left Calingarry Crossing, she had wanted to make things right with you.’

  ‘Well, she took her time about it.’

  ‘Sometimes knowing where to start is the hardest thing.’

  ‘The truth is a fairly universal place to start, I would have thought,’ Fiona said, sounding sober all of a sudden.

  Maggie knew she was wasting her breath. She didn’t bother hiding the exasperation in her voice. ‘I’m not here to defend your parents’ decision to keep the truth from you. This is a conversation you need to have with Phillip. Work on re-establishing a relationship with him. Once you have that, there won’t be cause to keep secrets. You’ll trust each other enough to sit down and talk about what matters.’

  ‘Oh, hmm, yeah, I get it now. Like you and Noah, you mean?’

  ‘Well, I guess, yes.’ Maggie couldn’t work out where that statement was going. ‘How about you drink the glass of water and I’ll get you a takeaway one from the fridge.’ Maggie fetched a plastic bottle of Mount Franklin mineral water, loosened the screw top lid and put it on the bar in front of Fiona. ‘Take this, then I think it might be best if you go and sleep it off.’

  The girl looked up, staring straight through Maggie, and asked, ‘So you don’t keep secrets from Noah?’ The smirk in Fiona’s voice suggested she wasn’t asking so much as challenging.

  Maggie considered a reply, keen to end whatever this was before it went any further. ‘Noah and I have a very close and honest relationship. Now—’ She wiped her hands on her apron.

  ‘So, he’s not keeping anything from you?’

  Maggie bristled. What had started out as a sort of apology, or so Maggie had assumed, was beginning to smell like a set-up. The girl was out to make a point, but Maggie was not about to let Noah become a part of whatever this was. If the girl was drunk, she was starting to sound like a vicious drunk.

  Maggie had had enough. ‘I’m suggesting you go now, Fiona.’

  ‘Hmm,’ she said as if contemplating Maggie’s request.

  ‘Look here,’ Maggie tried her best I’m-not-taking-any-crap-from-you voice. ‘I don’t know what you’re getting at, Fiona. If this has anything to do with Noah and Sydney, he’s already told me about your offer and I can assure you he’ll be doing no such thing. I am responsible for him until he’s eighteen and I will make the choices that need to be made.’

  ‘Not all of them,’ Fiona mumbled loud enough for Maggie to hear.

  ‘What’s that supposed to mean?’

  ‘Just that Noah makes his own decisions. He’s making some pretty major life decisions on his own right now. That’s why he wants to go to Sydney. He wants to talk to his dad. He misses him.’

  Ethne’s hand on Maggie’s arm was firm, but it was going take more than that soon.

  ‘Noah doesn’t need his father. My son knows he can talk to me about anything.’

  ‘Maybe not about being gay.’

  ‘What?’ The word was nothing more than a breath, barely audible.

  Maggie backed away from the girl, not trusting herself. She’d never felt so close to lashing out, but then she’d never had her world bumped off its axis in this way, everything shifting suddenly out of kilter.

  ‘Awright, girlie, that’s it.’ Ethne swung open the hinged counter, dropping it hard as she passed through to the public side of the bar. ‘Time you went home and sobered up.’

  Fiona tried to shake the woman off. ‘Let me go, you old bag. I’m not a baby.’

  ‘If it looks like a brat, smells like a brat, and acts like a brat, in my experience it’s generally a brat. So get on out of here.’

  By now, the few patrons in the bar had made themselves scarce. The suggestive stare and head toss from Ethne earlier had hurried the stragglers. A couple of blokes playing pool had put money in the jukebox and the Troy Cassar-Daley number was disguising the hysterics at the bar.

  ‘Noah’s gay, Maggie. He’s confused and too embarrassed to talk to you. He wants to tell his dad. Let me go, you old witch.’ Fiona stumbled, her flailing arms almost connecting with Ethne’s face. ‘I’m trying to help Maggie.’

  ‘Pity help us if you were trying to hinder,’ Ethne said, dodging the thrashing arms. ‘You might be wise to stop helping. And you, Maggie love, get yourself upstairs. I can take care of things down here.’

  Maggie would have loved nothing more than to escape the claustrophobic fug in the bar. Inside she was screaming ‘get out’, while her body could barely muster the energy to move one foot in front of the other. She leaned on the bar, catching her breath.

  ‘Got yourself a bit of a handful there?’ Barney grinned at Ethne, edging his way down the bar and nudging his drinking buddy, Louie—nicknamed the Fly because he worked in waste management with the local council—to follow.

  ‘You noticed?’

  ‘Hard not to.’

  ‘Awright then, how about you make yourself useful for once and get this girl back to Cheryl Bailey’s.’

  ‘Now this I gotta see,’ said Louie. ‘The Barnacle rollin’ someone else out the hotel door instead of the other way ’round.’

  ‘You get yourself over here, too, you useless lump of cow dung, and help.’

  While Ethne seemed to have everything in the bar in hand, Maggie’s world was spinning out of control.

  31

  Fiona

  ‘You’ve got a hide showing your face around here this morning.’ Ethne pushed a schooner of ice-cold water under Fiona’s nose.

  ‘Will she talk to me?’

  ‘Maggie?’ Ethne scoffed. ‘You’re lucky she was raised to forgive. Anyone else would’ve knocked your block off yesterday. What did you think you were doing coming out with something like that?’

  ‘I didn’t think.’

  ‘No, ’cause you were whacked out of your head on something. Didn’t you learn anything from the other night? What are yo
u taking? Give it here.’ Ethne held out her hand like a mother telling a child to spit out whatever was in its mouth.

  ‘I don’t do drugs. They were just pills Luke left behind. And I only took one.’

  ‘Just pills!’ Ethne parroted, her frenzied wiping of the bar sending her wobbly arms into overdrive. ‘Parasites! That’s what those blokes are pushing pills on kids—on anyone. That bloke of yours is worse. He’s a bad barnacle if ever I saw one.’

  ‘A what?’ Fiona grimaced. Her head hurt something awful.

  ‘Bad barnacles. The worst kind of blasted parasites. The sneaky bastards attach themselves to anything they can, but always under the waterline so they stay undetected—’til the damage is done. There they grow, get stronger and feed off their unsuspecting host. They gotta be scraped away or else they end up dragging you down.’

  Fiona slid the glass towards Ethne for a refill. ‘What are you on about?’

  ‘Pesky, bothersome little bastards like your Luke, pretending to be an oyster and thinking no one will notice he’s really a bad barnacle. You mark my words, girlie. The longer blokes like that stay attached to you, the harder they are to get rid of. Makes no sense keeping someone like that around. No matter how much they might look like an oyster, a good for nothing bad barnacle can never produce a pearl, no matter how hard they try.’

  ‘How do you know I’m not a bad barnacle?’

  ‘Because I know my oysters from my barnacles, that’s how. A genuine oyster will produce a pearl if the conditions are right. Their beauty is found inside.’ Ethne carved a chunk of lemon and with little regard for the splash factor on Fiona’s shirt let it plop in the glass. ‘I believe there’s a pearl in you, Fiona, but only if you distinguish yourself from the bad barnacles.’

  ‘Why would you think that about me after everything?’

  Ethne shook out a tea towel to wipe her sweaty brow and tucked it in the top of her apron. ‘Because there’s a certain irony in the creation of a pearl. A single grain, chosen from a sea of sand, grows and grows and, well, basically that tiny, insignificant grain then irritates the bejesus out of the oyster and bingo! A pearl.’